100 books like The Home Stretch

Most of us have complicated feelings about our parents, and Elizabeth Hay is no exception. The time Hay spends filling in the family back story pays off by making the elder-care journey more poignant and nuanced than a sparser portrait would have produced. I read this memoir at the height of my own care-taking marathon, and while I appreciated every gorgeous word, the whole book would have been worth it for this sentence alone: "Yes, I volunteered to take [the care of my aging parents] on, but there was never a moment when I didn't wish to be let off the hook." I breathed a huge sigh of relief: I am not a monster, and I am not the only one to feel that way. I still feel grateful for that sentence.

When Jann Arden falls into her role as caretaker to her parents, she uses journaling and social media to maintain her sanity. "I didn't want to feel alone in a room with Alzheimer's," she writes, and so she brings the reader into her home. Comprised of excerpts from Jann's journals, photographs that make the daily minutiae feel real, and recipes, Jann's beautiful book is a generous and very personal gift. Even those who are not already ardent Jann-fans will feel like her friend when immersed in this memoir. I did my first reading in one sitting, cried, and then read it again.

When I read this graphic novel for the first time in 2010, it had just been published, and my mom was still my mom. I had been a care aide for ten years and I was thinking a lot about what families had already been through by the time their beloved came to me in Extended Care. Tangles tells the story of Sarah Leavitt's family from the beginning, when the family starts to notice something is wrong with Mom, to the diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's disease, through the long journey until death. The pictures and text were a perfect combination that cracked open my heart and made me a better care aide.

Years later, I had a more personal use for Tangles. My mom didn't have Alzheimer's disease, but Leavitt's book resonated like a tuning fork in St. Paul's cathedral. "I decided to pretend she wasn't my mother… show more.

This graphic memoir by Roz Chast is one of my favorite books of all time. I completely relate to the story, which focuses on Chast’s relationship with her parents as they age and become less capable of managing independently.

The book depicts her repeated efforts to coax her parents to face the reality of their aging and failing health as she gradually does more and more to help them, a situation I’m very familiar with and wrote about in my recent memoir. As an only child (like me), she must deal with every crisis and decision.

Her drawings add humor and emphasis to the story, but the prose alone vividly portrays her frustrations and heartbreak as Chast faces complication after complication and loss after loss in her parents’ final few years. 

This was my go-to resource on several occasions when I was researching for my book.

While it concentrates on the work of 19th-century photographers based in southwestern Nova Scotia, the wealth of information gleaned from the captions and the photos themselves made this paperback invaluable to me. Indeed, anyone interested in streetscapes, domestic and public architecture, shipping, transportation, and so much more in Yarmouth town and county, will certainly appreciate this compendium.

This compelling family saga set on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia was published in 1996 and explores the lives of the complicated Piper family in the early 20th century.

My late mother was from Glace Bay, a mining town on Cape Breton, and I remember she was quite excited when she heard about Ms. MacDonald’s drama, and promptly bought a copy. She told me she couldn’t get beyond the first few chapters because it was far too filthy for her taste. Naturally, I then had to read the whole novel to find out just how controversial the book was!

This book is an eye-opening account of how the history of Nova Scotia became distorted in the interest of attracting tourists. This manufactured history exalts whiteness and masculinity, and quietly excludes ethnic minorities and women. The Yarmouth runestone, which is adduced as evidence that the Norse landed in Yarmouth, is an important artefact in this ideological history, and the authors give an excellent account of its history and its place in tourist history. 

This book offers a personalized, non-academic look at what it means for one Acadian to be part of the collective Acadian community. The author traces his family history all the way back to the time of the Acadian Expulsion and beyond. That ancestor was Joseph LeBlanc (Tyler's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather). With descendants scattered across modern-day Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the LeBlancs provide a window into the diverse fates that awaited the Acadians when they were expelled from their Acadian homeland. Some escaped the deportation; others were deported and later returned to the region, but not to same areas as those had been taken over by new settlers. In sum, the book is biographical approach to the history of the Expulsion.

When Robert MacNeil’s debut novel Burden of Desire was published in 1992, it stood out to me because it offered a fresh take on the Halifax (Nova Scotia) Explosion of 1917 as a backdrop to his compelling love-triangle storyline.

The Explosion was the largest man-made disaster in the world prior to World War II, and every school child in Nova Scotia, including myself, traditionally learns of the Explosion by reading Barometer Rising, Hugh MacLennan’s iconic novel that was published in 1941.

But MacNeil’s novel proves that historical fiction can be spicy and entertaining as well as truthful to its time period and setting. He is well-remembered as a television journalist for his long-running PBS show, the MacNeil Lehrer Report. Mr. MacNeil is now 92 years young.

I received this handsome hardcover book as a gift, and I’ve been entertained and educated every time I’ve opened it.

It contains over 1,000 entries and 300 visuals that not only depict notable Nova Scotians but also scandals, newsworthy events, and celebrations. I’ve been inspired by some of the daily entries to research them further, which has enhanced my three novels that are set in Nova Scotia.